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Charles  Augi^stus  Briggs 


The  Virgin  Birth  of 
Our  Lord. 


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CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  BRIGGS,  D.D.,  D.Litt. 

Graduate  Professor  of  Theological  Encyclopaedia 

and  Symbolics,  Union  Theological 

Seminary,  New  York 


'n 

I 


Wii/i  Introductio7i  by 

WILFORD  L.  ROBBINS,  D.D.,  LL.D. 
Dean,  General  Theological  Seminary,  New  York 


THOMAS    WHITTAKER,    Inc 
Bible  House,  New  York 


^  MAY  ^-^   1968 


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MaV  1  9  1921 


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CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  BRIGGS,  D.D,,  D.Litt, 

Graduate  Professor  of  Theological 

Encyclopaedia  and  Symbolics, 

Union    Theological    Seminary, 

New  York 


IVith  Introduction  by 

WILFORD  L.  ROBBINS,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Dean,  General  Theological  Seminary,  New  York 


THOMAS  WHITTAKER,  Inc., 
Bible  House,  New  York 


(/ 


INTRODUCTION 

I  ESTEEM  the  honor  of  being  asked  to  write 
a  word  of  preface  to  Dr.  Briggs's  paper  on 
the  Virgin  Birth.  I  owe  this  privilege  sim- 
ply to  the  fact  that  I  begged  earnestly  for  its  re- 
publication in  order  that  a  copy  might  be  given 
to  every  student  in  the  General  Seminary. 
Amidst  all  the  writing  on  this  topic  which  has 
appeared  of  late  no  presentation  seems  to  me 
clearer,  saner  or  more  cogent  than  the  argument 
here  put  forth.  The  fame  of  Dr.  Briggs  as  a 
fearless  and  open-minded  scholar  assures  us  that 
no  objection  on  the  score  of  Biblical  Criticism  has 
been  overlooked.  Meanwhile,  there  is  a  rever- 
ence in  his  whole  treatment  of  the  subject,  a  rea- 
sonable deference  toward  the  consensus  of  the 
Christian  consciousness,  a  sympathetic  apprecia- 
tion of  time-honored  theological  definition,  which 
give  a  grateful  sense  of  fairness  and  spiritual  in- 
tegrity. I  am  sure  that  my  own  feeling  of  obli- 
gation to  the  writer  will  be  widely  shared 
throughout  the  Church  at  large. 

WiLFORD   L.    ROBBINS, 
Dean,  General  Theological  Seminary,  New  York. 

Feast  of  the  Purification  B.  V.  M.,  1909. 


PREFACE 

THIS  discussion  of  the  Virgin  Birth  was 
first  prepared  for  the  Presbyterian  Min- 
isters' Association  of  New  York  in  April, 
1907.  It  was  then  carefully  revised  during  a 
winter  of  lectures  on  the  Apostles'  Creed,  and 
published  in  the  American  Journal  of  Theology, 
April,  1908.  I  have  been  urged  by  many  to  re- 
publish it  in  a  more  convenient  form  and  have  at 
last  decided  to  do  so.  I  have  made  another  re- 
vision, but  few  changes,  except  to  make  my  posi- 
tion clearer  here  and  there  and  to  remove  some 
friendly  objections.  It  would  have  cost  little 
more  labour  to  have  used  all  my  material  and 
written  a  large  volume.  Nothing  of  importance 
has  been  unconsidered,  so  far  as  I  know.  This 
study  is  once  more  given  to  the  public  in  the  hope 
that  it  may  remove  difficulties  from  the  minds  of 
serious  students  and  establish  them  in  the  Faith 
of  the  Bible  and  the  Church,  of  which  I  am  con- 
vinced the  Virgin  Birth  constitutes  an  essential 
part. 

C.  A.  Briggs. 
February  3,  1909. 


iH}t  Itrgtn  Itrttj  of  (iur  Snri 

THERE  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  are 
grave  difficulties  in  the  minds  of  many 
educated  men  and  women  of  this  genera- 
tion in  the  way  of  their  acceptance  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Virgin  Birth.  However  much  older 
men,  trained  in  a  different  theological  at- 
mosphere, may  regret  it,  and  be  unable  to  under- 
stand it,  we  should  not  hesitate  to  recognize  that 
the  situation  exists.  Therefore  we  cannot  over- 
come these  difficulties  by  a  mere  appeal  to  the 
authority  of  the  Church,  or  in  any  dogmatic  way. 
We  must  squarely  meet  them  by  removing  mis- 
conceptions and  so  restating  the  doctrine  that  it 
will  no  longer  be  open  to  reasonable  objection. 

/.    The  Fact  of  the  Virgin  Birth. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth  is  historically 
and  dogmatically  involved  with  the  doctrines  of 
the  incarnation  and  the  divinity  of  Jesus 
Christ;    but    that    by    no    means    implies    that 


8  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

men  may  not  hold  to  the  divinity  and  incar- 
nation of  our  Lord  without  the  definite  accept- 
ance of  the  Virgin  Birth.  The  apostle  Paul  is 
firm  in  his  statement  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  in  many  passages  he  discusses  the  in- 
carnation of  the  pre-existing  Son  of  God  from 
several  different  points  of  view;  but  nowhere 
does  he  directly  or  indirectly  give  us  the  least 
hint  that  he  thought  of  a  Virgin  Birth.  The 
author  of  the  prologue  of  the  Gospel  of  John  is 
still  more  emphatic  in  his  doctrine  of  the  divinity 
of  Christ  and  of  the  incarnation,  and  he  seems  to 
approach  very  closely  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Vir- 
gin Birth..-"  If  we  follow  the  ancient  reading  of 
vs.  13  in  Tertullian,  Irenaeus,  and  Justin  Martyr: 
"He  who  was  born,  not  of  blood,  nor  of  the  will 
of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God," 
we  get  something  very  near  the  Virgin  Birth. 
This  reading  from  Latin  texts  of  the  third  cen- 
tury cited  by  TertulHan,  one  hundred  years  ear- 
lier than  the  earliest  extant  Greek  codices,  and 
from  Greek  texts,  nearly  two  hundred  years  ear- 
lier cited  by  Irenaeus  and  Justin  Martyr,  is  fa- 
vored for  rhetorical  reasons  and  by  the  fact  that 
it  is  the  most  difficult  reading.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  external  evidences  of  Greek  codices  and 
Versions  are  overwhelmingly  against  it,  and  we 
cannot  reasonably  build  our  faith  upon  it.  So 
that  in  fact  while  this  gospel  may  possibly  have 
implied  the  Virgin  Birth,  this  is  at  most  a  prob- 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  9 

ability,  and  there  certainly  is  no  explicit  statement 
of  it. 

The  authors  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  and 
of  the  Book  of  Revelation  teach  plainly  enough 
the  divinity  of  Christ,  but  there  is  not  the  slight- 
est trace  of  a  Virgin  Birth  in  their  writings. 
There  is  no  more  reasonable  connection  between 
the  woman  in  childbirth  of  Rev.  12,  and 
the  virgin  Mary  than  the  fancies  of  allegorists, 
revived  in  recent  times  by  mythologistic  inter- 
preters. 

The  Virgin  Birth  is  known  only  to  the  Gospel 
of  Matthew  and  the  Gospel  of  Luke.  What  then 
does  this  situation  teach  us  as  to  the  doctrine? 
What  else  can  we  say  than  that  the  Virgin  Birth 
rests  upon  the  authority  of  these  gospels  alone? 
The  other  New  Testament  writings  that  set  forth 
the  divinity  of  Christ  and  His  incarnation,  so  far 
as  we  know,  did  not  connect  these  doctrines  with 
the  Virgin  Birth. 

And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  permit 
the  opponents  of  the  Virgin  Birth  to  pervert  this 
silence  into  authority  against  the  doctrine.  The 
argument  from  silence  cannot  be  used  as  a  nose 
of  wax  to  prove  anything  you  please.  It  has  its 
laws  and  its  limitations  like  any  other  argument.* 
If  the  other  writers  of  the  New  Testament  do  not 
indorse  the  doctrine  there  is  nothing  whatever  in 
their  language  that  can  be  cited  against  it.    In- 

1  See  my  Study  of  Holy  Scripture,  pp.   101  ff. 


lO  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

deed  sufficient  reasons  may  be  given  for  this  si- 
lence in  the  earUer  writings  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. If  the  authors  knew  of  this  doctrinal  fact, 
they  would  have  abstained  from  mentioning  it 
for  prudential  reasons,  lest  they  should  expose  the 
mother  of  our  Lord  to  scandal  during  her  life- 
time— such  scandals  as  did  in  fact  arise  so  soon  as 
the  Virgin  Birth  was  declared,  and  which  were 
certain  to  arise,  as  any  sensible  person  could  fore- 
see. The  Jews  did  not  assert  that  Joseph  was  the 
father  of  Jesus,  but  that  his  father  was  a  soldier 
named  Ben  Pandera.  This  is  evidently  a  fiction 
based  on  Ben  Parthena,  son  of  the  virgin,  and 
this  implies  the  Giristian  doctrine  which  it  an- 
tagonizes. Jesus  Himself  set  the  example  of  such 
prudence  when  He  refrained  from  declaring  or 
acknowledging  His  Messiahship  until  near  the 
close  of  His  life,  and  even  then  forbade  His  dis- 
ciples to  make  Him  known.^  St.  Peter,  St.  Paul, 
and  the  early  Christian  preachers  followed  their 
master  in  the  same  Christian  prudence  and  reti- 
cence in  their  early  teaching  and  preaching. 

Much  is  made  by  modern  opponents  of  the  Vir- 
gin Birth,  of  the  representation  that  Jesus  was 
the  son  of  Joseph,  and  that  the  Son  of  God  was 
born  of  the  seed  of  David,  according  to  the  flesh 
(Rom.  1:3).  But  how  else  could  the  New  Testa- 
ment writers  speak,  if  Jesus  were  indeed  the  son 
of  Joseph  by  public  and  private  recognition,  and 

»See  my  New  Light  on  the  Life  of  Jesus,  pp.   91   ff. 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  1 1 

SO  the  son  of  David  and  heir  of  the  messianic 
promises?  He  was  the  legal  and  acknowledged 
son  of  Joseph,  and  that  accounts  fully  for  all  such 
statements.  They  do  not  imply  that  Jesus  was 
begotten  by  Joseph  any  more  than  the  term  "born 
of  a  woman"  (Gal.  4:  4)  implies  that  Jesus  was 
born  of  a  woman  in  the  ordinary  way. 

It  is  indeed  astonishing  that  reasonable  men 
should  make  so  much  of  the  four  instances  in  the 
gospels  in  which  Jesus  is  said,  not  by  the  evangel- 
ists, but  by  the  people,  to  be  the  son  of  Joseph 
the  carpenter.  Two  of  them  are  in  Luke  4:  22 
and  Matthew  13:  55,  gospels  which  definitely  tell 
us  of  the  Virgin  Birth  previously,  and  therefore 
they  could  not  have  been  so  inconsistent  with 
themselves  as  to  assert  and  deny  the  Virgin  Birth 
within  the  limits  of  a  few  pages.  Two  of  them 
are  in  John  i :  45,  6 :  42,  the  gospel  which  gives 
us  throughout  the  highest  conception  of  Jesus  as 
the  Son  of  the  Father,  the  pre-existent  divine 
being.  Mark,  singularly  enough,  does  not  in  the 
parallels  to  Matthew  and  Luke  give  us  "son  of 
Joseph,"  but  simply  "son  of  Mary"  (6:  3).  We 
have  in  this  situation  a  much  better  reason  to 
claim  that  "son  of  Mary"  in  Mark  implies  Virgin 
Birth  than  to  say  "son  of  Joseph"  in  Matthew 
and  Luke  implies  that  Joseph  was  his  natural 
father. 

Much  is  made  by  some  recent  writers  of  the  re- 
cently discovered  old  Syriac  text  which  in  Matt. 


12  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

1 :  1 6  reads  "Joseph,  to  whom  was  betrothed 
Mary  the  virgin,  begat  Jesus  called  the  Messiah." 
It  is  quite  possible  that  this  may  have  been  in  the 
original  text,  as  Allen  thinks,^  but  even  then,  as 
he  shows,  "beget"  is  used,  not  in  the  sense  of  nat- 
ural, but  of  legal,  sonship,  for  the  reasons:  (a) 
that  the  genealogy  of  Matthew  was  composed  by 
the  author  on  the  basis  of  the  genealogy  of 
Chronicles,  and  gives  the  official  line  as  distin- 
guished from  Luke's  genealogy,  which  was  based 
on  private  documents  of  the  family  of  Jesus  and 
gives  the  natural  line,  (b)  In  several  instances 
the  term  "beget"  is  used  when  the  natural  mean- 
ing is  impossible  for  two  reasons,  one  that  there 
is  an  occasional  leaping  over  one  or  more  names, 
and  the  other  that  the  one  begotten  is  sometimes 
not  the  real  son,  but  the  son  of  another  Hne  and 
only  the  son  by  inheritance.  Therefore  "beget" 
is  at  times  nothing  more  than  legal  descent  and 
does  not  imply  any  more  than  that  Joseph  was  the 
legal  father  of  Jesus.  Furthermore,  it  can  hardly 
be  doubted  that  the  author  of  the  gospel  was  the 
author  of  the  genealogy,  and  he  could  not  be  so 
inconsistent  as  to  say  in  vs.  i6  that  Joseph  was 
the  natural  father  of  Jesus  and  then  in  vss.  18-25 
that  Jesus  was  virgin-born  and  that  Joseph  was 
only  His  legal  father. 

It  did  not  come  within  the  plan  of  St.  Mark 
and  St.  Paul  and  other  writers  of  the  New  Testa- 

3  Comment<M-y  on  8t.  Matthew,  p.  6. 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  1 3 

ment  to  state  the  mode  of  the  incarnation  but 
only  the  fact.  Indeed  Mark  carefully  abstains 
from  any  statement  whatever  as  to  the  life  of 
Jesus  before  His  baptism.  Mark  represents  Jesus 
as  the  Son  of  God,  fulfilling-  the  predictions  of 
Isaiah  and  Malachi  as  to  the  advent  of  Yahweh, 
and  therefore  implicitly  as  the  Yahweh  of  the  Old 
Testament,  the  God  of  the  Jews.  He  certainly 
could  not  have  thought  of  His  entrance  into  the 
world  in  the  ordinary  way  of  human  birth.  His 
silence  may  most  reasonably  be  accounted  for 
under  the  circumstances  as  an  intentional  silence 
as  to  the  birth  and  early  life  of  our  Lord,  in  order 
to  avoid  an  awkward  controversy  in  the  early 
days  of  Christianity. 

The  same  might  be  said  of  St.  Paul.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  he  represents  Jesus  as  pre-existing  as 
the  theophanic  angel  of  God  of  the  Pentateuchal 
history  (I  Cor.  10:  1-4),  and  in  Godlike  majesty 
and  glory  before  He  entered  the  world  by  incarna- 
tion (Phil.  2:  5-11),  which  he  magnifies  in  sev- 
eral passages  without  mentioning  human  father 
or  mother.*.  This  careful  avoidance  of  the  birth 
of  Jesus,  except  in  the  general  phrase,  "born  of  a 
woman"  (Gal.  4:  4)  and  "of  the  seed  of  David 
according  to  the  flesh"  (Rom.  1:3)  may  have 
been  for  prudential  reasons ;  for  St.  Paul  clearly 
teaches  that  Jesus  Christ  was  the  second  Adam, 

4  See  my  Messiah  of  the  Apostles,  pp.  520  fE. 


14  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

the  man  from  heaven  with  a  life-giving  spirit 
(I  Cor.  15:  45-49),  a  spirit  of  holiness  (Rom. 
1:4),  and  that  while  Himself  of  the  race  of 
Adam,  He  was  apart  from  the  race  in  that  He 
alone  was  possessed  of  sinless  and  incorruptible 
flesh  (Rom.  5:  12  if.;  8:  1-4;  H  Tim.  i:  10). 
St.  Paul  avoids  telling  us  how  Jesus  Christ  was 
born  son  of  Adam,  and  at  the  same  time  different 
from  every  other  son  of  Adam  as  Son  of  God. 
But  the  Christian  Church  saw  very  clearly  that 
the  necessary  and  inevitable  consequences  of  his 
teaching  were,  that  such  sinless,  incorruptible 
flesh  could  not  be  born  of  a  human  father  by  or- 
dinary generation,  but  only  of  a  pure  virgin ;  and 
that  such  a  holy  and  life-giving  spirit  could  only 
originate  by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  the 
Gospels  of  Luke  and  Matthew  tell  us. 

This  avoidance  of  the  doctrine  of  the  mode  of 
the  incarnation  by  most  of  the  writers  of  the  New 
Testament,  while  emphasizing  its  reality,  is  an  in- 
teresting and  significant  fact.  This  situation, 
which  is  so  clear  in  the  New  Testament,  ought  to 
teach  us  that  it  is  quite  possible  that  many  men  to- 
day may  be  convinced  of  the  divinity  of  our  Lord, 
and  of  the  reality  of  His  incarnation,  but  who  for 
various  reasons  are  reticent  as  to  the  Virgin 
Birth,  and  are  not  able  to  see  its  necessity  to  con- 
firm these  other  doctrines. 

The  Virgin  Birth  does,  however,  rest  upon  the 
authority  of  two  of  the  holy  gospels,  and  that 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  1 5 

authority  must  be  regarded  as  sufficient  for  those 
who  recognize  their  divine  inspiration.  It  has 
never  been  regarded  by  the  Christian  Church  as 
necessary  that  a  doctrine  should  be  sustained  by 
a  large  number  of  passages.  It  is  sufficient  that 
the  doctrine  be  clearly  and  unmistakably  stated. 
That  is  undoubtedly  true  of  the  Virgin  Birth.  It 
is  impossible  by  any  mode  of  explanation  to  re- 
move that  doctrine  from  these  two  passages  of 
Holy  Scripture. 

It  used  to  be  urged  by  the  opponents  of  the 
Virgin  Birth  that  it  was  a  myth  or  a  legend  that 
grew  up  gradually  in  the  apostolic  community 
and  was  eventually  tacked  on  to  the  gospels  of 
Matthew  and  Luke.  Biblical  Criticism  has  made 
it  evident  that  no  such  opinion  is  tenable.  This 
is  only  one  of  many  instances  in  which  Biblical 
Criticism  verifies  and  confirms  Christian  doctrine. 
It  is  certain  that  these  passages  in  Matthew  and 
Luke  were  in  those  gospels  when  they  first  came 
from  their  authors'  hands.  It  is  also  certain  that 
they  were  not  altogether  composed  by  these 
authors,  but  were  based  on  older  sources,  which 
they  edited,  adapted,  and  explained.  These 
sources  belong  to  the  earliest  layer  of  Christian 
documents,  such  as  the  original  Mark,  the  Logia 
of  Matthew,  and  the  epistles  to  the  Galatians  and 
Corinthians.  They  were  among  those  sources 
which,  St.  Luke  tells  us,  he  made  use  of  in  com- 
posing his  gospel. 


l6  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

Furthermore,  these  were  poetic  sources,  in  the 
measures  and  strophical  organization  of  Hebrew 
poetry.  They  undoubtedly  were  composed  in 
Semitic  originals,  and  were  translated  by  the 
authors  of  our  gospels  into  Greek.^  This  takes 
them  back  to  the  Palestinian  community  before 
the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  when  it  was  under 
the  superintendence  of  St.  James,  St.  Jude,  and 
St.  Simon,  the  half-brothers,  or  cousins  of  our 
Lord.  It  may  be  shown  by  the  most  probable  lit- 
erary and  historical  evidence  that  these  poems 
were  composed  subsequent  to  the  death  of  Mary, 
between  the  years  55  and  64  a.d.  They  were  used 
independently  by  the  authors  of  Matthew  and 
Luke,  who  both  depend  upon  the  same  poetic 
sources,  but  use  them  in  a  different  way  without 
any  relation  to  one  another. 

It  is  incredible  that  St.  Luke,  who  tells  us  in  his 
preface  that  he  "traced  the  course  of  all  things 
accurately  from  the  first,"  and  that  he  wrote  to 
Theophilus  that  he  might  "know  the  certainty 
concerning  the  things  wherein  thou  wast  in- 
structed" (i:  3,  4),  could  have  used  these  poems 
setting  forth  a  doctrinal  fact  of  such  uniqueness 
and  importance  without  consulting  with  the  im- 
mediate family  of  Jesus,  represented  as  it  was  by 
the  chiefs  of  the  Palestinian  community.  How 
can  anyone  think  that  Christian  poems  stating  so 
clearly  the  Virgin  Birth  of  our  Lord  could  have 

5  See  my  Messiah  of  the  Gospels,  pp.  45  ff. 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  1/ 

been  written  and  circulated  in  the  Palestinian 
community  during  their  presidency  without  their 
sanction,  and  have  attained  such  an  authority  as 
to  be  recognized  by  St.  Luke,  after  the  most  care- 
ful and  accurate  inquiry,  as  valid  sources  along- 
side of  the  Gospel  of  Mark  and  the  Logia  of 
Matthew  for  the  life  of  our  Lord?  Under  these 
circumstances  we  should  recognize  that  the  Vir- 
gin Birth  has  the  authority  of  the  immediate 
relatives  of  our  Lord,  who  alone  could  by  any 
possibility  know  anything  about  it.  It  is  there- 
fore vain  to  appeal  to  the  Gospel  of  Mark  as  giv- 
ing the  original  teaching  of  the  apostles  with 
reference  to  Jesus  over  against  Matthew  and 
Luke  who  give  a  later  tradition;  for  these  gos- 
pels get  the  story  of  the  Virgin  Birth  from  poetic 
Palestinian  sources  just  as  truly  as  they  get  the 
greater  part  of  their  narrative  from  Mark  and 
the  greater  part  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  from  the 
Logia  of  Matthew.  Mark  does  not  speak  of  the 
Virgin  Birth  because  he  says  nothing  about  the 
Hfe  of  Jesus  prior  to  His  baptism  by  John,  as  we 
have  seen. 

Much  is  made  by  some  critics  of  the  repre- 
sentation of  Matthew  that  the  Virgin  Birth  of 
Jesus  is  in  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy  of  Im- 
manuel  in  the  earlier  Isaiah.  But  this  use  of  Old 
Testament  prophecies  is  a  characteristic  feature 
of  the  Gospel  of  Matthew  alone,^  which  is  not 

6  See  Messiah  of  the  Gospels^  p,  319. 


l8  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

found  in  Luke,  and  which  was  not  in  the  poetic 
sources  used  by  both  evangelists.  Therefore  it  is 
absurd  to  make  the  prophecy  of  Immanuel  the 
source  of  the  supposed  myth  or  legend. 

It  is  impossible  on  the  principles  of  historic 
criticism  to  explain  the  Virgin  Birth  as  a  myth 
or  a  legend.  It  has  not  their  characteristic  feat- 
ures.'^ The  statement  of  this  dogmatic  fact  is  too 
near  the  event,  too  close  to  the  family  of  Jesus 
for  this  to  have  been  possible.  Besides,  the  Vir- 
gin Birth  of  our  Lord,  though  it  has  analogies  in 
the  mythologies  of  other  nations,  as  the  early 
Christian  writers  recognize,  yet  differs  from  all 
these  in  an  unparalleled  uniqueness  in  that  all 
these  mythological  births  are  by  natural  genera- 
tion by  God,  who  assumes  the  forms  of  man  or 
animals  for  the  purpose,  and  therefore  these  are 
not  virgin  births ;  whereas  the  birth  of  our  Lord 
was  by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  without  any 
generation  whatever,  whether  of  man  or  God. 
The  efforts  of  some  scholars  to  find  a  basis  in 
oriental  myths  are  still  greater  failures,  for  the 
reason  that  it  is  impossible  to  show  in  these  early 
Christian  poems  any  trace  whatever  of  such 
myths,  and  because  the  early  Qiristian  poems  tell 
of  the  Virgin  Birth  in  such  a  simple,  artless  way 
that  it  is  altogether  unreasonable  to  think  of 
them  as  depending  upon  grotesque  and  highly- 
colored  oriental  myths. 

7  See  my  Study  of  Holy  Scripture,  p.  522. 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  I9 

It  must  be  plain  to  everyone  that  such  a  unique 
event  as  the  Virgin  Birth  of  our  Lord  would 
have  been  an  insoluble  mystery  even  to  Joseph 
and  Mary.  They  needed  special  divine  com- 
munications, such  as  the  gospels  record,  to  en- 
able them  to  think  of  its  possibility.  But  they  re- 
ceived no  explanation  of  it,  and  could  not  under- 
stand its  purpose.  The  gospel,  in  simple  and 
lucid  terms,  tells  us  that  Mary  "kept  all  these 
things  and  pondered  them  in  her  heart."  Joseph 
and  Mary  could  not  report  them  to  others.  They 
would  have  been  laughed  to  scorn.  It  is  there- 
fore simple  perversity  to  use  the  statements  of 
the  gospels  as  to  the  relations  of  Joseph  and 
Mary  and  his  brethren  to  Jesus  as  an  argument 
against  the  Virgin  Birth.  Mary's  secret  knowl- 
edge that  she  had  conceived  Jesus  by  the  power 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  given  birth  to  Him  in  her 
virginity,  would  not  prevent  her  from  bringing 
up  Jesus  as  her  child.  She  could  not  do  other, 
even  under  these  circumstances,  than  look  upon 
the  boy  as  her  boy,  and  the  man  as  her  son,  and 
feel  for  him  the  natural  maternal  anxieties  and 
responsibilities.  The  virgin-born  was  yet  a  babe 
in  her  arms,  a  boy  under  parental  discipline,  a 
man  under  maternal  solicitude  and  affection.  His 
sorrows  were  her  sorrows,  his  joys  her  joys,  his 
trials  pierced  her  heart.  The  same  set  of  sacred 
canticles  that  Luke  used  in  giving  us  the  "Hail 
Mary"  and  the  Virgin  Birth  gives  also  the  words 


20  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

of  Simeon  to  Mary:  "Yea,  a  sword  shall  pierce 
through  thine  own  soul  also."  St.  Luke  found 
no  inconsistency  here ;  no  more  will  any  man  who 
is  not  anxious  to  find  it. 

From  the  nature  of  the  case  the  report  as  to 
the  Virgin  Birth  of  our  Lord  could  only  emerge 
from  His  own  near  relatives  after  His  divinity  and 
His  incarnation  had  been  made  evident,  not  only 
to  the  family  of  Jesus,  but  also  to  the  entire  apos- 
tolate  and  the  Christian  Church.  It  is  hardly 
conceivable  that  Mary  would  have  kept  alto- 
gether secret  the  fact  as  to  the  Virgin  Birth  of 
our  Lord  after  it  had  been  made  evident  that  He 
was  the  Messiah  and  was  indeed  divine.  Her 
natural  modesty  and  holy  purity  would  have 
withheld  these  most  delicate  facts  from  the 
Christian  public,  but  inevitably  she  would  have 
confided  them  to  her  confidants  and  especially  to 
the  chiefs  of  the  Christian  community.  They 
would  most  certainly  have  been  kept  esoteric  as 
long  as  the  virgin  mother  lived,  in  order  to  save 
her  from  scandalous  misrepresentations ;  but  after 
her  death,  when  the  Christian  Church  had  be- 
come firmly  established  under  the  headship  of 
James  and  Simeon,  the  reasons  for  such  reticence 
would  soon  pass  away ;  and  so  soon  as  it  was 
necessary  to  combat  the  Ebionites,  who  denied 
the  divinity  of  our  Lord  and  asserted  that  He  was 
the  son  of  Joseph  and  simply  a  human  Messiah, 
it  became  necessary  for  the  chiefs  of  the  Church 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  21 

to  make  public  the  doctrinal  fact  of  the  Virgin 
Birth,  which  in  itself  made  the  Ebionite  position 
untenable,  and  speedily  forced  them  to  become 
truly  Christians,  or  to  leave  the  Church.  Thus 
the  doctrinal  fact  of  the  Virgin  Birth  was  made 
known  just  about  the  time  when  we  could  rea- 
sonably expect  it.  One  would  be  unreasonable  to 
ask  for  it  at  an  earlier  date. 

We  may  therefore  say  with  the  utmost  confi- 
dence :  there  is  no  valid  reason,  so  far  as  Biblical 
or  Historic  Criticism  is  concerned,  to  doubt  the 
doctrinal  fact  of  the  Virgin  Birth. 

//.     The  Doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth  became  im- 
bedded in  the  primitive  Roman  Creed,  which 
cannot  be  dated  later  than  the  middle  of  the  sec- 
ond century.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  Roman 
Creed  was  only  a  gradual  development  of  bap- 
tismal creeds  based  on  the  trinitarian  formula 
going  back  to  the  apostles  themselves.  Every 
clause  of  that  creed  is  biblical  and  apostolic  in  its 
character.  Not  one  of  its  statements  can  be  re- 
garded as  a  later  development  of  Christian  doc- 
trine. There  is  not  the  sHghtest  trace  of  any  evi- 
dence in  the  Christian  Church  of  the  second  cen- 
tury to  impeach  the  doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth 
apart  from  Ebionite  and  Gnostic  sects.  It  was 
only  natural  that  the  Gospel  of  the  Roman  physi- 
cian^   St.    Luke,    should    influence    the    Roman 


22  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD, 

Creed,  rather  than  the  Gospel  of  John,  which  was 
more  influential  in  Asia. 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  primitive  form  of  the 
Nicene  Creed  does  not  contain  the  statement  of 
the  Virgin  Birth,  but  that  cannot  be  used  as  an 
argument  against  it,  or  against  its  importance.  It 
was  precisely  the  same  situation  that  we  meet  in 
the  New  Testament  in  St.  Paul  and  St.  John, 
who  are  the  chief  dogmatic  writers,  and  who 
therefore  must  be  the  basis  for  any  dogmatic 
creed.  The  fathers  of  Nicea  did  not,  under  the 
circumstances  of  the  Arian  heresy,  feel  the  need 
of  stating  the  Virgin  Birth,  which  was  not  in- 
volved in  that  controversy.  They  had  one  defi- 
nite purpose,  to  overcome  and  destroy  Arianism. 
It  is  clear,  however,  that  in  the  East  as  well  as  in 
the  West  the  doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth  was 
considered  essential;  for  the  Synod  of  Antioch, 
which  condemned  Paul  of  Samosata  in  269  a.d., 
said  in  its  official  acts : 

We  confess  and  proclaim  that  the  Son,  being 
with  the  Father,  God  and  Lord  of  all  createtj 
things,  and  being  sent  by  the  Father  from  heaven 
and  incarnate,  has  assumed  man,  wherefore  the 
body,  taken  from  the  Virgin,  containing  all  the  ful- 
ness of  the  Godhead  bodily,  has  been,  without 
capability  of  change,  united  with  the  Godhead,  and 
has  been  deified. 

When  the  Creed  of  Nicea  was  enlarged  and 
presented  to  the  Council  of  Chalcedon  (a.d.  451) 
as  the  faith  of  the  Fathers  of  the  previous  Coun- 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  2^ 

cil  of  Constantinople,  the  Virgin  Birth  appears  as 
an  essential  part  of  the  historic  Nicene  faith  in 
that  form  of  the  Creed  which  for  nearly  fifteen 
centuries  has  been  the  Creed  of  the  entire  Chris- 
tian Church.  No  one  thought  of  questioning  it 
during  these  centuries,  whether  at  the  division  of 
the  East  and  West,  or  of  Protestantism  from 
Rome,  except  a  few  Anabaptists  and  Socinians, 
until  recent  times. 

I  know  that  there  are  some  excellent  scholars 
and  historians  who  give  an  interpretation  of  the 
article  of  the  Virgin  Birth  which  weakens  its  im- 
portance.   They  tell  us  that  Virgin  Birth  is  one 
thing,  and  that  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary  is  an- 
other thing ;  that  the  latter  term  was  used  merely 
to  emphasize  the  reality  of  the  birth  of  our  Lord 
over  against  Docetic  heresies,  which  denied  his 
entrance  into  the  world  by  birth.     This  is  cer- 
tainly a  novel  interpretation.     It  cannot  be  sus- 
tained either  by  grammatical  exegesis  or  by  his- 
toric interpretation.     It  is  quite  true  that  it  was 
necessary  to  emphasize  the  reality  of  the  birth  of 
Jesus  Christ  into  the  world.    But  that  might  have 
been  done  by  saying:  "born  of  Mary,"  a  phrase 
as  old  as  Ignatius,  or  "of  Mary  of  Nazareth,"  or 
"Mary,  the  wife  of  Joseph."     When  they  said 
"Mary,   the   virgin,"   they   distinctly   recognized 
that  the  mother  of  our  Lord  was  known  in  the 
Church  as  "the  virgin."     It  seems  to  me  alto- 
gether probable  that  this  meant  what  the  Roman 


24  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

Church  has  always  claimed  that  it  meant:  that 
Mary  was  not  only  a  virgin  when  she  gave  birth 
to  our  Lord,  but  that  she  always  remained  a  vir- 
gin. She  was  consecrated  to  be  the  mother  of 
God :  how  could  she  ever  be  the  mother  of  merely 
human  children?  But  whether  the  traditional 
Roman  interpretation  be  true  or  not,  certainly 
the  very  least  that  we  can  put  into  the  term,  Vir- 
gin Mary,  in  the  old  Roman  Creed,  is  that  she 
was  a  virgin  when  she  gave  birth  to  Jesus  our 
Lord. 

There  are  some  who  urge  that  all  the  articles 
of  the  Creed  have  received  new  and  different  in- 
terpretations from  those  which  were  designed  by 
their  authors.  This  is  true  in  the  sense  that  they 
have  received  fuller  and  richer  explanations,  and 
that  they  have  been  relieved  of  misinterpretations  ; 
but  it  is  not  true  in  the  sense  that  any  of  them 
has  lost  its  real  original  meaning.  It  is  always 
necessary  in  any  doctrinal  statement  to  distin- 
guish between  the  form  and  the  substance  of  doc- 
trine, between  that  which  is  essential  and  that 
which  is  unessential  and  temporary.  What  if  we 
mean  by  Creation  something  different  now  from 
what  the  Fathers  meant?  We  do  not  deny  that 
God  made  the  world.  What  if  our  conceptions 
of  flesh  and  body  differ  from  those  of  the  an- 
cients? We  no  less  hold  to  the  Resurrection  of 
the  body.  Our  opponents  would  have  us  inter- 
pret the  phrase,  "born  of  the  Virgin  Mary,"  in  a 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  2$ 

sense  which  excludes  the  Virgin  Birth  altogether, 
or  makes  it  a  mere  detail  of  the  reality  of  the 
birth.  That  is  not  interpretation:  it  is  denial  of 
this  article  of  the  Creed. 

There  is  no  fact,  no  Christian  doctrine  that  is 
more  emphasized  by  early  Christian  writers  than 
that  of  the  Virgin  Birth  of  our  Lord.  It  was  in- 
deed the  burning  question  from  Ignatius  to  Ter- 
tullian,  from  the  close  of  the  first  century  to  the 
middle  of  the  third  century.  Ignatius,  Justin, 
Irenaeus,  Hippolytus,  TertuUian,  overlapping  one 
another  in  linked  succession,  in  their  combat  with 
Jew  and  Ebionite  and  Gnostic,  show  through 
their  writings  that  the  Virgin  Birth  was  the  doc- 
trine which  overthrew  Jew  and  Ebionite  on  the 
one  side,  in  its  assertion  of  the  divine  origin  of 
our  Lord,  and  Gnostic  on  the  other  side,  in  its  as- 
sertion of  His  true  humanity  as  born  of  the  Vir- 
gin Mary.  It  is  therefore  a  perversion  of  history 
for  anyone  to  say  that  "born  of  Mary  the 
virgin,"  means  any  less  than  what  St.  Luke  gives 
us,  or  than  Ignatius,  Justin,  Irenaeus,  Hippolytus 
and  TertuUian  battle  for. 

The  battle  for  the  Virgin  Birth  continued 
through  the  third  and  fourth  centuries,  though 
subordinate  to  more  profound  and  subtle  Christo- 
logical  problems.  As  it  was  necessary  to  main- 
tain the  reality  of  the  birth  of  the  Son  of  God 
over  against  those  who  held  that  the  Son  of  God 
attached  Himself  to  the  man  Jesus,  either  at  his 


26  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

baptism,  or  when  he  first  appeared  in  the  temple, 
or  after  his  birth;  so  it  was  just  as  necessary  to 
maintain  the  Virgin  Birth  over  against  a  more 
subtle  form  of  Docetism  which  thought  that  the 
Son  of  God  attached  Himself  in  the  womb  of 
Mary  to  the  child  conceived  by  Mary ;  for  in  all 
these  cases  alike  the  same  situation  emerges  that 
the  m.an  Jesus  is  a  separate  and  distinct  being 
from  the  Son  of  God,  the  union  between  them 
being  only  external  or  ethical,  not  at  all  vital  and 
organic.  Over  against  any  such  doctrine  not 
only  do  the  two  gospels  that  teach  the  Virgin 
Birth  cry  out,  but  also  St.  John  and  St.  Paul,  and 
the  entire  apostolic  teaching.  For  St.  John  does 
not  tell  us  that  the  Son  of  God  took  possession  of 
the  man  Jesus,  whether  prior  to  his  birth  or  later ; 
but  that  He  became  man,  and  so  became  just  as 
truly  man  as  He  had  been  truly  God.  So  St.  Paul 
tells  us  that  the  pre-existing  Son  of  God  was  born 
of  a  woman,  and  that  He  who  was  in  the  form  of 
God  took  to  Himself  the  form  of  man,  and  that 
this  pre-existing  divine  person  suffered  and  died, 
rose  again  and  reigns  with  the  name  above  every 
name.  If  only  two  writings  teach  the  Virgin 
Birth  directly,  yet  the  whole  New  Testament 
cries  out  with  one  voice,  without  dissent,  against 
any  such  idea  as  that  the  pre-existing  Son  of  God 
merely  attached  Himself  to  the  man  Jesus. 

All  those  New  Testament  writings  which  em- 
phasize the  pre-existence  of  Christ  think  natur- 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  2^ 

ally  of  the  divine  side  of  the  Incarnation,  and  are 
only  concerned  with  its  reality  on  the  human  side. 
It  is  significant  that  the  two  gospels,  which  alone 
give  the  Virgin  Birth,  have  nothing  to  say  about 
the  pre-existence  of  Christ.  Interested  in  the  life 
of  Jesus,  naturally  they  are  most  concerned  with 
the  mode  of  His  entrance  into  the  world.  There 
is  no  inconsistency  here,  but  only  complementary 
teaching,  both  being  necessary  to  the  completed 
doctrine. 

It  is  true  that  I  said  in  my  sermon  on  the  Vir- 
gin Birth,^  alluding  to  the  previous  discourses  of 
the  series :  "All  that  we  have  thus  far  learned  of 
the  incarnation  from  the  teaching  of  Jesus  and 
the  writings  of  St.  Paul,  St.  John,  and  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  would  stand  firm,  if  there  had 
been  no  Virgin  Birth;  if  Jesus  had  been  born  of 
Joseph  and  Mary,  having  father  and  mother  as 
any  other  child."  I  see  now  that  this  language 
was  not  sufficiently  guarded,  and  so  it  has  been 
misinterpreted  by  many.  I  said  this  in  a  sermon 
in  which  I  strove  to  maintain  the  reality  and  im- 
portance of  the  Virgin  Birth,  and  I  meant  by  this 
statement  nothing  more  than  what  I  have  said  al- 
ready in  this  paper,  that  the  express  teaching  of 
these  passages  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  John  does  not 
give  the  Virgin  Birth,  and  therefore  cannot  be 
used  for  or  against  it,  or  even  against  the  opinion 
that  Joseph  was  the  father  of  Jesus.    But  when 

S  See  The  Incarnation  of  Our  Lord,   p.  217. 


28  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

it  comes  to  making  logical  deductions  from  these 
statements  and  reconciling  them  with  the  pre-ex- 
istence  and  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  con- 
structing a  consistent  dogma,  it  is  an  entirely 
different  matter.  These  passages  then  also  cry 
out  against  a  human  father,  because  a  child  be- 
gotten by  ordinary  generation  would  yield  us  an 
individual  man,  a  separate  and  distinct  person 
and  being,  from  the  second  person  of  the  Trinity ; 
God  and  man,  not  one  person  and  being,  the  God- 
man. 

In  these  days  when  the  authority  of  the  Church 
counts  but  little  to  many  minds,,  and  when  even 
the  authority  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  is  questioned 
by  not  a  few  Christian  scholars,  it  is  inevitable 
that  the  whole  range  of  Christian  doctrines  will 
•come  into  the  field  of  Cfiticism,  and  that  these 
will  be  compelled  to  maintain  themselves  against 
every  variety  of  attack ;  most  of  all,  the  funda- 
mental doctrine  of  Christianity,  the  Divinity  of 
Jesus  Christ,  and  the  related  doctrines  as  to  His 
Incarnation  and  Virgin  Birth. 

There  are  those  who  persuade  themselves  that 
they  may  hold  to  the  Divinity  of  Christ  without 
belief  in  a  real  Incarnation ;  or  that  they  may  be- 
lieve in  the  Incarnation  without  the  Virgin  Birth. 
I  have  already  recognized  that  a  man  may  doubt 
or  deny  the  third  without,  in  his  own  mind,  deny- 
ing the  second,  or  the  first.  And  yet,  from  a  his- 
toric and  dogmatic  point  of  view,  he  surely  has 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  29 

put  himself  in  an  untenable  position,  which  he 
cannot  long  maintain.  Historically  and  logically, 
the  Divinity  of  Christ  and  the  Incarnation  are 
bound  up  with  the  Virgin  Birth,  and  no  man  can 
successfully  maintain  any  one  of  them  without 
maintaining  all. 

The  early  Unitarians  departed  from  the  his- 
toric faith  in  the  Holy  Trinity  at  first  into  semi- 
Arianism,  then  they  divided  between  Sabellian- 
ism  and  Arianism ;  but  it  was  not  long  before 
most  of  them  abandoned  altogether  the  Divinity 
of  Christ,  and  recognized  Him  only  as  the  great- 
est of  all  the  prophets.  The  departures  from  the 
Nicene  Faith  in  recent  times  have  taken  another 
direction.  Some  have  advocated  a  more  subtle 
Nestorianism ;  but  the  most  recent  fad  is  to  make 
Paul  of  Samosata  the  wronged  apostle  of  their 
creed.  According  to  this  ancient  heretic  the  man 
Jesus  was  inhabited  by  the  Son  of  God,  and  was 
divine  in  the  sense  that  God  dwelt  in  him  and  in- 
fluenced all  his  mental,  moral,  and  physical  activi- 
ties. This  theory  gives  nothing  more  than  an 
ethical  union  of  deity  with  humanity.  It  is  true 
that  they  try  to  bridge  the  chasm  between  the 
creator  and  the  creature  by  denying  that  the 
creature  man  is  of  any  different  nature  from  his 
creator;  and  therefore  the  ethical  union  may  be 
conceived  of  as  so  close  that  no  practical  differ- 
ence exists.  But  in  this  they  simply  add  pantheis- 
tic tendencies  to  an  ancient  heresy,  and  do  not 


30  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

thereby  improve  it,  but  really  make  it  all  the  more 
dangerous.  Difficulties,  numerous  and  of  great 
magnitude,  spring  up  on  every  side,  much  greater 
in  many  respects  than  those  involved  in  the  Faith 
of  the  Christian  Church.  They  still  name  Jesus 
Christ,  God,  and  think  of  His  entering  the  world 
by  incarnation,  yet  not  in  the  historic  sense  of  the 
Bible  and  the  Church,  but  only  in  a  sense  which 
Bible,  History  and  sound  reason  all  alike  con- 
demn; for  Jesus  thus  inhabited  by  the  Son  of  God 
is  really  no  longer  divine  as  the  one  only  unique 
Son  of  the  Father,  the  second  person  of  the  Holy 
Trinity,  but  the  first-born  son  of  an  innumerable 
family  of  sons  of  God — all  gods  as  truly  as  Jesus 
Christ  Himself,  when  they  shall  eventually  become 
as  fully  inhabited  by  God  as  Jesus  was.  The  in- 
carnation of  the  Son  of  God  is  then  only  a  pre- 
lude to  an  indefinite  number  of  incarnations  of 
sons  of  God  in  all  perfected  Christians.  Of 
course  from  the  point  of  view  of  this  error.  Vir- 
gin Birth  is  no  more  needful  for  Jesus  than  it  is 
for  the  Christian  brethren.  It  is  evident  that  these 
scholars  use  "Son  of  God,"  "Divinity,"  and  "In- 
carnation" in  unbiblical  and  unhistoric  senses, 
merely  as  a  cloak  to  cover  doctrines  which  are  as 
wide  apart  from  the  Nicene  Faith  as  earth  from 
heaven. 

The  Christ  of  the  Bible  and  the  Church  is  not 
merely  a  divinely  inhabited  man,  but  the  God- 
man.     The  deitv  and  the  humanity  are  insep- 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  3 1 

arable,  and  eternally  united  in  one  and  the  same 
divine  person.     Mary  the  virgin,  the  mother  of 
Jesus,  was  the  mother  of  God  because  she  gave 
birth,  not  simply  to  a  man,  but  God,  who  had  be- 
come man  in  her  womb  when  she  conceived  Him 
by  the  Holy  Ghost.  Christ  is  not  God  in  the  sense 
that  He  is  the  elder  brother  of  an  indefinite  num- 
ber of  gods ;  but  in  the  sense  that  He  is,  and  al- 
ways will  be,  the  one  only  unique  Son  of  the 
Father,  the  second  person  of  the  Holy  Trinity. 
Only  by  a  Virgin  Birth  could  such  a  God-man  be 
born  into  the  world.    A  birth  by  human  genera- 
tion would  give  us  only  an  individual  man,  in- 
habited by  the  Son  of  God,  and  so  two  distinct 
persons,  the  second  person  of  the  Trinity  and  the 
person  of  the  man  Jesus.  That  cannot  in  any  way 
be  reconciled  with  the  faith  of  the  Bible,  or  the 
Church.    It  is  simply  the  revival  of  ancient  errors 
rejected  by  the  Church  once  for  all  and  forever 
nearly  fifteen  centuries  ago. 

These  opponents  of  the  Virgin  Birth  of  our 
Lord  are  masking  behind  Biblical  Criticism  and 
New  Theology.  But  Biblical  Criticism  gives 
them  no  countenance.  The  chief  biblical  critics 
of  our  day  are  against  them.  And  the  new  theol- 
ogy, so  far  as  I  know  it,  knows  them  not.  How 
absurd  to  revive  errors  exploded  fifteen  centuries 
ago,  and  call  them  new  theology.  Let  these  op- 
ponents tell  us  something  new  and  worthy  of  at- 
tention and  we  will  give  heed  to  them;  but  it  is 


32  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

vain  for  them  to  suppose  that  they  can  dress  up 
ancient  errors  and  ask  us  to  accept  them  as  new 
theology. 

Some  months  ago  I  was  conversing  with  a 
number  of  gentlemen  on  an  ocean  steamer  and 
explaining  to  them  the  doctrine  of  the  Virgin 
Birth.  The  next  day  one  of  them  came  to  me, 
and  said :  "I  have  had  a  talk  with  a  biologist  on 
board.  He  said :  'I  wish  I  had  Dr.  Briggs  in  my 
laboratory.  I  would  show  him  that  there  could 
be  no  such  thing  as  a  Virgin  Birth.'  "  This  biolo- 
gist was  careful  not  to  make  this  statement  to  me. 
If  he  had,  I  would  surely  have  said  to  him:  "My 
dear  sir,  I  have  no  need  to  go  to  your  workshop 
to  know  how  a  man-child  is  born  into  this  world, 
and  I  am  very  sure  you  cannot  show  me  how  the 
God-man  must  be  born."  It  should  be  said  that 
St.  Luke,  who  gives  us  the  fullest  statement  as  to 
the  Virgin  Birth,  was  a  physician  as  well  as  a 
historian,  and  undoubtedly  aware  of  the  biological 
processes  connected  with  conception  and  genera- 
tion. Doubtless  modern  biologists  know  more 
than  he  did  about  those  subjects;  but  the 
ancient  Jewish,  Greek  and  Roman  physicians 
knew  as  much  as  the  moderns  of  everything 
connected  with  conception  and  generation  that 
can  in  any  way  have  to  do  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  Virgin  Conception  and  Virgin  Birth. 
If  St.  Luke  saw  no  biological  difficulties,  and 
if  the  greatest  physicians  the  world  has  produced 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  33 

have  not  hesitated  to  accept  the  doctrine,  it  is  vain 
for  any  modern  biologists  to  object  to  it.  They 
do  not,  in  fact,  object  from  biological  reasons,  but 
because  they  are  unwilling  to  accept  the  super- 
natural, or  any  kind  of  divine  interposition  in  the 
world. 

We  say  born  of  a  virgin.  What  we  mean, 
however,  is  that  his  mother  was  a  virgin  at  his 
birth ;  she  had  not  known  man.  It  is  more 
properly,  therefore,  Virgin  Conception  than 
Virgin  Birth.  We  say  Virgin  Birth  because  we 
mean  to  imply  that  the  mother  retained  her  vir- 
ginity from  conception  to  birth. 

Of  course,  if  Jesus  Christ  were  merely  a  man, 
or  the  second  person  of  the  Trinity  had  simply  at- 
tached Himself  to  an  individual  man,  there  would 
be  no  reason  for  the  birth  of  such  a  man  in  any 
other  way  than  by  generation  from  a  human 
father.  But  when  you  begin  with  a  divine  per- 
son, and  ask  how  that  divine  person  was  to  be- 
come man  and  be  conceived  in  the  womb  of  a 
woman,  Biology  has  no  information  whatever  to 
give  you.  The  Bible  and  the  Church  teach  that 
Mary  conceived  by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit ; 
that  there  was  a  theophany  at  the  conception,  a 
divine  overshadowing  of  glory,  such  as  there 
was  at  the  Transfiguration,  and  at  the  taking 
possession  of  the  ancient  temple  and  tabernacle 
by  the  Glory  of  God.  Whether  that  was  so  or 
not,  Biolog\'  cannot  tell  us  of  its  own  knowledge. 


34  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

All  the  physical  sciences  combined  cannot  deny  it, 
because  it  is  altogether  beyond  their  sphere  of  in- 
vestigation. It  is  a  mystery  of  dogmatic  fact, 
for  which  we  require  sufficient  evidence.  That 
evidence  is  given,  by  those  best  qualified  to  know, 
in  the  gospels ;  and  it  is  sustained  by  the  pro- 
prieties of  the  case,  for  it  is  evident  that  in  no 
other  way  than  by  the  conception  by  a  virgin 
could  God  become  really  incarnate.  He  could  in- 
habit an  individual  man  conceived  in  the  ordinary 
way,  but  He  could  not  become  man,  taking  to 
Himself  all  that  is  essential  to  human  nature 
while  remaining  Himself  divine  in  His  per- 
sonality, and  constituting,  not  an  individual  man, 
but  an  individual  God-man. 

We  have  in  the  gospels  two  births  in  close  con- 
nection, that  of  John  the  Baptist  and  that  of 
Jesus.  John  the  Baptist  was  born  in  just  the  way 
that  our  opponents  would  have  it  that  Jesus  was 
born.  John  the  Baptist  was  born  in  a  remarkable 
manner,  as  was  Isaac  of  ancient  times,  of  old  peo- 
ple, and  of  a  woman  who  had  been  barren  from 
youth  to  old  age.  John  the  Baptist  was  "filled 
with  the  Holy  Spirit  even  from  his  mother's 
womb";  that  is,  he  was  divinely  inhabited  from 
birth.  The  birth  of  Jesus  is  distinguished  from 
such  a  birth.  He  was  not  simply  filled  or  in- 
habited by  the  divine  Spirit  from  birth :  He  was 
conceived  by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the 
womb  of  the  Virgin  Mary,     This  antithesis  be- 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  35 

tween  John  and  Jesus  in  their  births,  according 
to  the  gospels,  shows  how  impossible  it  is  to  re- 
gard Jesus  as  merely  a  divinely  inhabited  man 
without  altogether  discarding  the  gospels. 

I  was  told  recently  by  one  of  the  younger  mem- 
bers of  the  ministry,  who  is  unsettled  as  to  the 
Virgin  Birth  and  the  Nicene  Faith,  that  modern 
philosophy  does  not  regard  the  doctrine  of  two 
natures  in  one  person  as  possible.  It  is  evident  to 
anyone  who  has  gone  over  the  history  of  Phil- 
osophy that  great  confusion  prevails  among 
modern  teachers.  I  cannot  see  that  there  is  any 
such  thing  as  a  consensus  as  to  what  modern 
Philosophy  is.  I  certainly  know  of  no  consensus 
of  philosophic  opinion  that  is  inconsistent  with 
the  formula  of  Chalcedon.  The  Faith  of  Chal- 
cedon  was  formulated  and  has  maintained  itself 
on  the  basis  of  the  two  greatest  philosophic  sys- 
tems the  world  has  ever  seen,  those  of  Plato  and 
Aristotle.  All  modern  Philosophy  builds  upon 
them.  New  philosophers  arise  of  various  degrees 
of  importance,  but  after  they  have  had  their  say 
the  world  generally  swings  back  toward  either 
Plato  or  Aristotle,  or  both.  Moreover,  the  greatest 
philosophical  theologians  of  our  age,  who  have 
been  entirely  familiar  with  the  best  modern 
Philosophy,  have  maintained  the  Virgin  Birth 
of  our  Lord.  But  in  fact  Philosophy  has  no  more 
to  say  on  this  question  of  the  Virgin  Birth,  and 
the  two  natures  in  one  person,  than  has  Physical 


36  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

Science,  because  the  question  is  beyond  her 
sphere.  She  can  tell  us  something  about  human 
personality  and  the  faculties  of  the  human  mind, 
heart  and  will,  and  of  the  relation  of  these  to  the 
human  body.  Philosophy  can  speak  guardedly 
about  metaphysical  relations ;  but  Philosophy  has 
no  knowledge  of  the  divine  person,  or  of  the 
nature  of  the  divine  mind,  affections,  and  will, 
except  so  far  as  these  are  reflected  in  man,  and 
nature,  and  Holy  Scripture;  and  all  this,  as  any 
thinker  must  admit,  can  only  be  very  inadequate. 
Christian  Philosophy,  when  she  builds  on  Chris- 
tian Theology,  may  help  much  to-day,  as  she  has 
ever  in  the  past,  in  the  explanation  of  the  myster- 
ies of  our  religion ;  but  when  she  disregards  Holy 
Scripture  and  Christian  Theology,  and  attempts 
to  scale  the  heights  of  speculation  by  herself,  she 
is  impotent  to  tell  us  anything  whatever  of  the 
Holy  Trinity,  or  the  mode  of  the  incarnation  of 
the  Son  of  God.  It  is  altogether  beyond  the 
range  of  Philosophy  to  say  that  the  second  person 
of  the  Trinity  may  not  take  a  human  nature  to 
Himself,  as  the  Faith  of  Chalcedon  implies,  with- 
out taking  therewith  human  personality. 

The  Church  adopted  this  formula,  because  it 
alone  was  consistent  with  biblical  statements  as  to 
the  humanity  and  divinit}^  of  Jesus  Christ — a 
formula  not  altogether  adequate,  it  is  true,  for  it 
makes  a  statement  with  reference  to  one  of  the 
greatest  mysteries  of  our  faith,  but  a  statement 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  37 

made  necessary  by  historical  circumstances,  to 
harmonize  the  statements  of  Holy  Scripture  and 
apostolic  tradition,  and  to  ward  off  dangerous 
errors.  It  is  quite  true  that  modern  Philosophy 
may  justly  object  to  many  statements  that  have 
been  made  by  theologians  ancient  and  modern,  as 
to  the  human  side  of  the  formula  of  Chalcedon. 
It  may  say  that  it  sees  no  reason  why  original 
sin  may  not  be  transmitted  through  the  mother 
as  well  as  through  the  father.  Quite  true :  theo- 
logians have  sought  out  many  ways  of  accounting 
for  this,  other  than  the  immaculate  conception  of 
the  blessed  Virgin.  It  is  not  necessary  for  us  to 
overcome  this  difficulty  in  our  minds ;  for  it 
would  certainly  be  presumptuous  for  anyone  to 
say  that  God  could  not  overcome  it,  even  with- 
out a  miracle. 

It  may  be  said  that  personality  and  individuality 
may  come  from  the  mother  as  well  as  from 
father  and  mother.  If  that  were  so,  it  would  not 
by  any  means  imply  that  when  the  second  person 
of  the  Trinity  became  man,  He  assumed  the  per- 
sonaHty  and  individuality  of  man  from  the  virgin. 
The  personality  was  in  the  divine  nature  of  the 
second  person  of  the  Trinity  when  He  assumed 
human  nature.  Why  should  anyone  suppose  that 
He  must  assume  another  and  a  human  personality 
with  the  human  nature,  even  if  such  a  thing  were 
possible  in  the  passive  element  in  the  conception  ? 
The  Son  of  God  became  man  according  to  the 


38  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

purpose  of  the  Incarnation,  He  was  not  obliged 
by  any  moral  or  physical  necessity  to  become  any 
more  of  man  than  He  chose  to  become. 

The  conception  was  by  the  power  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  and  not  by  any  kind  of  parthenogenesis,  as 
some  of  our  opponents  would  state  it.  The 
Qiurch  has  never  thought  of  any  such  thing  as 
parthenogenesis.  The  doctrine  based  on  St. 
Luke  as  given  in  the  Apostles'  Creed  is:  "Who 
was  conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  born  of  the 
Virgin  Mary,"  and  in  the  Nicene  Creed:  "Who 
for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation  came  down  from 
heaven  and  was  incarnate  by  the  Holy  Ghost  of 
the  Virgin  Mary,  and  was  made  man,"  A  par- 
thenogenesis would  give  us  an  individual  man 
with  a  human  personality,  and  therefore  be  just 
as  much  against  the  Christian  Faith  as  the  natural 
fatherhood  of  Joseph.  Hippolytus  says:®  "The 
Word  was  the  first-born  of  God  who  came  down 
from  heaven  to  the  blessed  Mary  and  was  made 
a  first-born  man  in  her  womb."  Irenaeus  says :" 
"Why  did  He  come  down  into  her,  if  He  were  to 
take  nothing  from  her  ?"  Tertullian  says :  "This 
Word  called  His  Son,  under  the  name  of  God, 
was  seen  in  divers  manners  by  the  patriarchs, 
heard  at  all  times  in  the  prophets,  at  last  brought 
down  by  the  Spirit  and  power  of  God  into  the 

9  Com,  Luke  2  :  7. 

10  Eaer..  iil,  22 :  2. 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  39 

Virgin  Mary,  was  made  flesh  in  her  womb."" 
Athanasius  says:  "When  He  was  descending  to 
us  He  fashioned  His  body  for  Himself  from  a 
virgin."^^ 

The  gospels  make  the  Holy  Spirit  the  active 
agent;  early  Fathers  make  the  second  person  of 
the  Trinity;  but  what  matters  it?  In  all  divine 
actions,  the  three  persons  of  the  Trinity  co- 
operate. In  all  these  cases  it  is  clear  that  the 
conception  of  the  holy  seed  by  Mary  was  by 
divine  power,  and  therefore  we  are  not  to  think  of 
it  as  of  an  ordinary  conception,  or  that  that  which 
was  conceived  was  identical  with  what  mothers 
conceive  under  other  circumstances.  What  Mary 
conceived  was  different  from  that  which  any 
other  mother  ever  conceives,  for  it  was  not  mere 
man,  but  the  God-mian,  and  even  as  man  different 
from  every  other  son  of  Adam  as  possessed  of 
sinless,  incorruptible  flesh  and  a  holy,  life-giving 
spirit ;  and  if  so,  it  is  folly  to  insist  that  the  human 
nature  then  conceived  must  have  had  human  per- 
sonality and  individuality,  for  that  personality  and 
individuality  must  be  centered  in  the  divine  per- 
son, the  active  agent  in  the  incarnation. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Bible  and  the  Church  is 
that  the  second  person  of  the  Trinity  entered  the 
womb  of  the  Virgin,  and  became  incarnate  there, 
when  she  conceived,  by  the  power  of  the  divine 

11  Haer.,  13. 

12  de  incarn.,  c.  8. 


40  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

Spirit,  the  God-man.  If  God  is  immanent  in 
nature,  especially  in  the  person  of  the  Logos,  or 
second  person  of  the  Trinity,  surely  there  is  no 
valid  philosophical  objection  to  the  opinion  that 
the  divine  presence,  which  was  really  there,  as  in 
all  things,  took  to  Himself  that  primal  human 
nature,  which  was  appropriate  to  the  mother's 
womb  to  be  nourished  there  until  the  birth.  He 
who  manifested  Himself  to  man  in  so  many  the- 
ophanies,  as  the  biblical  narratives  record,  now 
brought  the  theophanic  manifestations  to  their 
culmination  in  a  permanent  incarnation. 

Under  the  general  conception  of  the  Virgin 
Birth  there  are  many  possible  explanations  that 
may  be  made ;  doubtless  some  that  no  one  has  yet 
proposed ;  and  it  is  quite  possible  that  we  may 
never  learn  the  real  method  of  the  conception  of 
Jesus.  Neither  the  Bible  nor  che  Church  requires 
anything  definite  here.  Only  we  cannot  admit 
any  such  definition  of  the  conception  of  Mary  as 
excludes  the  divine  activity,  or  represents  that 
Jesus  must  have  been  conceived  by  Mary  just 
exactly  as  every  other  man  child  is  conceived 
when  begotten  by  a  human  father,  with  a  distinct 
individuality,  to  which  the  second  person  of  the 
Trinity  could  be  united  only  externally  or  ethi- 
cally, as  a  second  and  distinct  being. 

I  have  in  my  sermon  on  the  Kenosis^-  distinctly 
stated  the  limitations  to  which  the  God-man  sub- 

12  The  Incarnation  of  our  Lord. 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  4I 

jected  Himself  in  His  life  in  this  world,  and  have 
urged,  after  Dorner,  the  doctrine  of  a  gradual  in- 
carnation, perfected  only  at  the  resurrection  and 
ascension.  I  certainly  cannot  see  any  inconsis- 
tency between  such  a  Kenosis  and  the  formula  of 
Chalcedon.  All  these  supposed  inconsistencies 
are  in  the  minds  of  our  opponents,  or  of  those 
who  in  the  supposed  interests  of  Christian 
liberty  of  opinion  weaken  the  doctrine  of  the 
Virgin  Birth  so  as  to  empty  it  of  reality.  I  have 
fully  recognized  the  difficulties  that  beset  the 
denial  of  human  personality  to  Jesus.  I  have 
given  what  seemed  to  me  a  possible  solution  of 
the  difficulty: 

Complete  personality  of  the  Godhead,  in  the  hu- 
man sense,  was  in  the  unity  of  the  divine  nature. 
There  is  only  one  divine  person  in  this  sense. 
Therefore  it  was  necessary  that  the  Son  of  God 
should  take  up  into  Himself  all  those  elements  of 
personality  which  g.re  necessary  to  the  integrity  of 
an  individual,  as  a  distinct  and  separate  being, 
which  He  did  not  have  as  the  Son  of  God,  and 
which,  therefore.  He  must  have  as  a  son  of  man. 
Accordingly  we  are  compelled  to  think  of  a  divine- 
human  personality  for  the  God-man;  that  is,  of 
certain  elements  of  human  personality  in  which 
the  human  nature  was  centered,  as  in  organic 
union  with  the  central  divine  personal  distinction 
of  the  Word  of  God. 13 

t 

The  formula  of  Chalcedon  as  the  necessary  un- 
folding of  the  doctrine  of  the  Virgin  Birth  is  not 

13  Incarnation,  p.  201. 


42  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

responsible  for  any  particular  theory  of  human 
personality,  or  for  any  of  the  particular  explana- 
tions of  the  difficult  problems  involved,  whether 
those  of  Leontius  of  Byzantium,  John  of  Damas- 
cus, whom  Christian  theologians  have  generally 
followed,  or  any  other  ancient  or  modern  divine. 
There  is  room  here  for  considerable  difference 
of  opinion,  and  fresh  study  in  which  Philosophy 
may  be  helpful.  All  that  the  Church  doctrine 
requires  as  it  faithfully  adheres  to  the  teaching 
of  Holy  Scripture,  is  that  we  should  recognize 
that  the  unity  of  the  God-man  is  in  the  per- 
son of  the  Logos ;  that  there  are  not  two  distinct 
beings,  God  and  man,  in  Jesus  Christ,  united  only 
by  an  ethical  union  of  indwelling,  but  one  unique 
being,  the  God-man,  with  a  single,  not  a  dual  per- 
sonality, or  individuality. 

The  modern  mind  uses  by  preference  the  in- 
ductive method.  I  have  used  this  method  all  my 
professional  life,  as  much  probably  as  anyone 
else  in  the  field  of  Holy  Scripture  and  other 
departments  of  Theology.  But  it  is  not 
the  only  method.  All  legitimate  methods 
should  be  used  for  the  discovery  and  the 
verification  of  truth  and  fact.  It  is  evident  that 
the  inductive  method  has  its  place  and  im- 
portance; but  it  ought  not  to  be  so  exaggerated 
as  to  make  men  skeptical  of  other  methods.  We 
cannot  limit  our  knowledge,  especially  in  The- 
ology, to  what  induction  gives  us.    We  can  never 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  43 

know  God  save  very  inadequately  by  the  in- 
ductive method.  We  may  be  scientists,  and  in  a 
measure  philosophers  and  historians  of  a  certain 
grade,  without  going  beyond  it ;  but  it  is  impos- 
sible to  be  biblical  scholars  or  theologians  resting 
on  that  method  alone,  and  it  is  difficult  even  to  be 
Christians.  The  Holy  Scriptures  have  vindi- 
cated their  divine  authority  for  nineteen  cen- 
turies, and  the  Creeds  of  the  Church  formulated 
on  their  basis  for  nearly  so  long — the  Apostles' 
Creed  since  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  the 
Nicene  since  the  early  fourth,  the  Faith  of 
Chalcedon  since  the  fifth.  It  is  vain  to  suppose 
that  Christians  will  abandon  their  faith  in  Holy 
Scripture  and  the  Creeds  simply  because  in- 
ductive reasoning  does  not  yield  their  doctrines, 
or  because  Physical  Science  and  Philosophy  can- 
not vindicate  them.  If  they  could,  the  Christian 
religion  would  be  reduced  to  the  level  of  com- 
monplace, and  its  divinity  be  open  to  suspicion. 

The  evidence  for  the  Faith  of  the  Church  in 
the  Virgin  Birth  is  as  strong  as  anyone  could 
reasonably  exact.  What  stronger  evidence 
would  men  have?  It  was  impossible  to  present 
any  evidence  that  Physical  Science,  Philosophy, 
or  ordinary  investigation  in  any  department  of 
knowledge  could  altogether  verify.  We  may 
surely  ask  scholars  to  be  reasonable,  and  not 
exact  impossibilities. 

It  has   seemed  to   me   for   a   long  time   that 


44  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

modern  preachers  and  writers  have  exaggerated 
certain  features  of  the  human  nature  of  our  Lord. 
This  is,  it  is  true,  a  reaction  from  the  exaggera- 
tion of  the  divinity  and  neglect  of  the  humanity 
in  former  times.  But  this  reaction  has  already 
gone  too  far.  It  was  not  essential  to  the  hu- 
manity of  our  Lord  that  He  should  be  like  the 
ordinary  man  in  all  respects.  He  did  not  assume 
the  grossness,  coarseness,  vulgarity,  and  sinful 
tendencies  of  common  humanity.  He  was,  as  the 
older  theologians  said,  "the  common  man" ;  that 
is,  His  humanity  was  the  real,  complete,  har- 
moniously developed  humanity,  having  all  the 
humanity  which  is  in  common,  all  that  is  essen- 
tial to  mankind,  but  having  His  own  uniqueness, 
as  the  second  Adam,  the  ideal  man,  the  norm  of 
our  race. 

It  is  necessary  to  a  true  biblical  and 
historical  Faith  that  the  humanity  and  the  divin- 
ity should  be  more  comprehensively  studied.  It 
is  not  merely  the  Virgin  Birth  that  is  in  ques- 
tion, in  the  interest  of  the  more  complete 
humanity  of  our  Lord ;  it  is  also  the  doctrine  of 
original  sin  and  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus ;  it  is 
also  His  bodily  resurrection  and  ascension,  and 
the  giving  of  His  body  in  the  Eucharist.  It  is, 
moreover,  the  whole  nature  of  the  atonement  and 
Christian  salvation  with  its  doctrine  of  sacrifice 
and  propitiation.  All  of  these  doctrines  are 
trembling  in  the  balance   in  those  very  minds 


THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD.  45 

which  doubt  or  deny  the  Virgin  Birth.     Those 
.  who  give  up  the  Virgin  Birth  will  be  compelled 
by  logical  and  irresistible  impulse  eventually  to 
give  up  all  of  these. 

Jesus  Christ  was  man,  but  not  an  individual 
man  altogether  like  other  men.  He  was  unique 
in  His  humanity,  because  He  is  the  only  God- 
man,  and  so  became  the  common  man,  able  to 
sympathize  deeply  and  thoroughly  with  all  man- 
kind— men,  women  and  children.  The  center  of 
His  complex  being  was  not  human  but  divine. 
Jesus  Christ  became  man  to  identify  Himself 
with  man  and  nature  forever,  and  so  be  and  re- 
main closer  to  man  than  any  of  his  fellow-men 
can  be.  If  Jesus  were  only  loosely  connected 
with  the  divine  being  within  Him,  if  the  union 
were  merely  an  ethical  one,  then  there  could  not 
have  been  any  real  sacrifice  for  the  sins  of  the 
world ;  His  death  would  be  only  that  of  a  martyr 
and  His  blood  have  only  educational  value.  H 
the  Son  of  God  were  only  loosely  joined  with  the 
man  Jesus,  a  resurrection  of  His  body  would  be 
useless,  and  if  no  resurrection  of  the  body,  then 
no  giving  of  His  body  in  any  sense  in  the  holy 
Eucharist,  and  that  most  sacred  sacrament  of  our 
religion  would  become  merely  a  love  feast.  A 
second  advent  and  a  world  judgment  also  disap- 
pear from  the  scheme  of  such  a  Theology.  And 
what  have  we  left?  A  religion  such  as  the  bril- 
liant Hamack  gives  us  in  his  Essence  of  Chris- 


46  THE  VIRGIN  BIRTH  OF  OUR  LORD. 

tianity,  a  quintessence  indeed,  as  Loisy  justly 
calls  it,  but  with  all  the  life  and  glory  of  Chris- 
tianity squeezed  out  of  it,  a  religion  such  as  never 
has  existed,  and  never  can  exist,  except  in 
speculative  brains. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  men  may  not  hold 
to  many,  if  not  the  most,  of  the  essential  doctrines 
of  our  religion  without  belief  in  the  Virgin 
Birth ;  but  I  do  say  that  the  very  same  influences, 
which  lead  some  men  to  discard  the  Virgin  Birth, 
lead  others  to  discard,  some,  one  of  these  doc- 
trines, some,  others;  and  that  these  are  really  to 
the  logical  mind  all  linked  together  in  one  mas- 
sive chain,  a  comprehensive  whole,  the  historical 
Faith  of  the  Christian  Church ;  not  of  any  one 
denomination  of  Christians,  but  of  them  all ;  not 
as  special  to  any  particular  age,  but  as  the  one 
Faith  transmitted  from  Christ  and  His  apos- 
tles; not  merely  dogma,  but  the  vital  experience 
of  all  generations  of  Christians  for  nineteen 
centuries. 


DATE  DUE 


BS2423.1.B85 

I  he  virgin  brith  of  Our  Lord 

inmi^'r.l?^?S^?!^eminary-Speer  Library 


